The Commentariat -- February 27

New York Times Editors: "In defense of their bill to slash federal spending by $61 billion over the next seven months, House Republicans claim they are trying to make the economy grow and create jobs. In truth, such deep and sudden cuts could derail the recovery.... The question is whether the Obama administration and the Senate can prevail against the false rhetoric.... It’s time for leadership." CW: see my comment on this -- a response to Frank Rich's column -- below. ...

... Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns in a Washington Post op-ed: "In the midst of the Great Depression, our government managed to fund some of the most enduring and memorable documentaries, photographs, art and dramatic plays this country has ever produced. Our need for such cultured and civilizing influences is no less urgent now.... Polls consistently show that huge majorities of all Americans support public broadcasting.... Almost an admonishment, [President Ronald Reagan] spoke to me about the responsibility he saw for a private sector-governmental partnership when it came to public broadcasting and the arts and humanities. (His administration was very supportive of these long-standing institutions.)"

... Logrolling. Carl Hulse of the New York Times: how millions of dollars in earmarks led to billions of dollars in spending -- or so earmark opponents argue.

Karen Garcia: "the very same  corporate billionaires sitting on nearly two thirds of the nation's wealth, the plutocrats responsible for the biggest wealth disparity in American history, are now being asked to hang out at the White House and solve the unemployment problem."

Glenn Greenwald on the trashing of Rolling Stone investigative journalist Michael Hastings: ".While Hastings seeks to expose the secret wrongdoing of the powerful, journalists like John Burns, Norah O'Donnell, and Julian Barnes seek to protect it....  Hastings and especially Lt. Col. [Michael] Holmes courageously put their names on their statements; but the powerful military officials who apparently broke the law are able to smear them without any need to identify themselves, thanks to their reporter-servants who serve as government spokespeople masquerading as journalists." CW: read the update, too. ...

... AND I missed this excellent post by Greenwald on "the many steps taken to dramatically expand the war on whistleblowers being waged by the current President, who ran on a platform of 'protecting whistleblowers.'" Greenwald discusses the DOJ's creepy pursuit of New York Times reporter James Risen:

For a President who insists that we must 'Look Forward, Not Backward' -- when it comes to investigating war crimes by high-level Bush officials -- this anti-whistleblower assault reflects not only an obsession on preserving and bolstering the National Security State's secrecy regime, but also an intense fixation on the past.  And increasingly extremist weapons -- now including trolling through reporters' banking and phone records -- are being wielded to achieve it. 

Here MSNBC's Cenk Uygur interviews Greenwald, which covers aspects of both of Greenwald's posts linked above:

Dan Balz of the Washington Post: the National Governors Association, meeting in Washington, D.C., this weekend is "facing what could be one of its most partisan periods in more than a decade.... Obama will host the governors Sunday night for a black-tie dinner and will meet with them Monday for a session that is likely to include some direct give-and-take about some of the policies the Republicans most dislike. But before the NGA meeting started, the president met privately with Democratic governors." ...

This governor has to understand Wisconsin is a stubborn constituency. We fish through ice! -- Bradley Whitford, actor, at yesterday's rally in Madison. Video above Saturday's Ledes.

... Michael O'Brien of The Hill: "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is trying to force workers in his state to give up their rights, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Saturday. Solis, speaking at the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) Winter Meeting, accosted Walker and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) for their efforts to reform collective bargaining rights for public workers in their states." CW: I have been complaining for weeks now (see Comment #10, for example) about Solis' being AWOL as labor disputes erupt. I hear the White House reads some of my comments, so maybe I helped a little to nudge Solis out of hiding. ...

... Michael Fletcher & Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "With many working Americans financially battered by the recession and the years of economic uncertainty that preceded it..., [Republican governors] are aiming to be seen as friends of the middle class even as they challenge workers who themselves are middle class. Their success may ultimately hinge on whether voters see public employees as another privileged special interest or whether they sympathize with the workers standing up for their rights. In Madison, tens of thousands converged on the state Capitol on Saturday..... Smaller demonstrations were held at other statehouses across the country, including several that brought thousands of protesters to the District, Annapolis and Richmond." ...

Hide Away in Rockford. A unique tourism video:

... CW: we covered this the other day, but the story has developed legs, so it bears repeating in this iteration by Rick Ungar of Forbes: Wisconsin state employees pay for 100 percent of their pensions. The pensions are simply deferred income, which comes out of employees' salaries & goes into the pension fund. What Walker & Wisconsin's Republican legislators "are actually asking is that the employees take a pay cut."

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: in "Indiana..., Gov. Mitch Daniels eliminated bargaining for state employees six years ago, shows just how much is at stake, both for the government and for workers. His 2005 executive order has had a sweeping impact: no raises for state employees in some years, a weakening of seniority preferences and a far greater freedom to consolidate state operations or outsource them to private companies." ...

Howard Fineman: "For all of the valid concern about reining in state spending..., the underlying strategic Wisconsin story is this: Gov. Scott Walker, a Tea Party-tinged Republican, is the advance guard of a new GOP push to dismantle public-sector unions as an electoral force. Last fall, GOP operatives hoped and expected to take away as many as 20 governorships from the Democrats. They ended up nabbing 12. What happened? Well, according to postgame analysis by GOP strategists and Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi -- who chaired the Republican Governors Association in 2010 -- the power and money of public-employee unions was the reason."

Joe Nocera of the New York Times writes an entertaining -- and informative -- piece on why the biggest banksters won't do any hard time.

New York Times graphic.Clifford Levy of the New York Times: "Nearly two decades ago, the collapse of Soviet Communism offered the promise ... the newly independent former Soviet republics, sprung from the shackles of totalitarianism, would embrace free elections, multiple political parties and a vigorously independent media. But those hopes now seem premature, or perhaps naïve. In the 1990’s, the Soviet breakup sowed chaos — most notably in Russia — and a corps of autocrats arose in response, pledging stability and economic growth."

Nicholas Kristof: the idea that the Middle East is "unfit for democracy ... is insulting to the unfree world." ...

... Borzou Daragahi and Garrett Therolf of the Los Angeles Times report on some horrifying stories of murder & beatings by Libyan "security" forces, as related by people who have escaped the country.

Mark Sherman of the AP: Abdullah al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen, recalls his 2003 arrest and detention: over a 16-day period, he was "strip-searched repeatedly, left naked in a jail cell and shower for more than 90 minutes in view of other men and women, routinely transported in handcuffs and leg irons, and kept with people who had been convicted of violent crimes.... In the midst of al-Kidd's detention, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to Congress about recent major successes against terrorism. No. 1 on Mueller's list was the capture of professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. No. 2 was the arrest of al-Kidd, a Kansas-born convert to Islam who was not charged with a crime.... The Supreme Court is weighing whether al-Kidd's arrest and detention violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. The court, which will hear argument Wednesday, also is being asked to decide whether former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held personally liable...."

Local News

CW: a few days ago, I linked to this story reporting that Florida "Gov. Rick Scott said during a radio interview Tuesday that Florida shouldn’t move to take away public employees’ collective bargaining rights as the Republican governor of Wisconsin has proposed." I thought Scott was about to lose his status as Worst Governor in America. But no. It turns out Scott "opposes" rescinding collective bargaining rights because he likely can't easily rescind them -- they're written into the state's constitution. Here's a report from Julie Hirschfeld-Davis: of Bloomberg News: "While Florida’s constitution grants state workers the right to unionize and bargain for workplace rights, Scott said, 'It’d be great to be able to change it.'” Soott further says, “Our state workers don’t pay for anything into their pension plan. And we can’t afford that -- it’s not fair to taxpayers. If you didn’t have collective bargaining, would it be better for the state? Absolutely.'”

Fox "News," Orlando: "A woman who was the former president of the Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter in Gainesville has been arrested for drunk driving."

CW: there's so little U.S. news this morning that Yahoo News made this report one of its top five stories: "Todd Palin had trouble with his snowmobile skis toward the end of the world's longest snowmobile race as a rival team to surged to victory Saturday." I didn't read it. Palin probably blames President Obama's environmental policy for his loss.

News Ledes

New York Times: "... the Capitol authorities [in Madison, Wisconsin] announced on Sunday that demonstrators could continue their all-night sleepovers in the building and would not be forcibly ejected or arrested. Just one day earlier, the state agency that oversees the Capitol police had said that the overnight protests, which have occurred continuously for almost two weeks..., would cease on Sunday. The agency is led by an appointee of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican.... Said Jim Palmer, the executive director of the 11,000-member Wisconsin Professional Police Association: 'Now it’s clear that law enforcement professionals are running the show.'”

New York Times: "In [Zawiya, Libya,] 30 miles west of Tripoli, hundreds of people rejoiced in a central square on Sunday, waving the red, black and green flag that has come to signify a free Libya and shouting the chants that foretold the downfall of governments in Tunisia and Egypt.... Rebels, in control of the city, had reinforced its boundaries with informal barricades, and military units that had defected stood guard with rifles, six tanks and anti-aircraft guns mounted on the backs of trucks. In the central square here, a mosque was riddled with enormous holes, evidence of the government’s failed attempt to take back this city on Thursday.”

... New York Times: "Tunisia’s prime minister, a holdover from the government that was toppled last month, resigned Sunday after a weekend of violent protests that left five people dead in the capital, Tunis. The prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, had been the target of weeks of demonstrations by protesters who felt that he was tainted by his links to the old government."

... AP: "Hundreds of armed anti-government forces backed by rebel troops who control the city closest to the capital Tripoli appeared to be readying Sunday to repel an expected offensive by forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi who have surrounded Zawiya. An Associated Press reporter who reached Zawiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli, confirmed the anti-government rebels are in control of the center of the city of 200,000. They have army tanks and anti-aircraft guns mounted on pickup trucks deployed. But on the outskirts, they are surrounded by pro-Gadhafi forces."

... Washington Post: the Obama Administration held back in its comments about the situation in Libya because "... diplomats in Tripoli told them that, in the words of one official, 'certain kinds of messaging from the American government could endanger the security of American citizens.' There were fears that Americans could be taken hostage."

AP: "North Korea threatened Sunday to enlarge its nuclear arsenal and mercilessly attack South Korea and the United States, as the allies prepared to start annual joint military drills which the North says are a rehearsal for an invasion."

Full House Fold

Art by Barry Blitt for the New York Times.Frank Rich: "Still heady with hubris from the midterms — and having persuaded themselves that Gingrich’s 1995 history can’t possibly repeat itself — radical Republicans are convinced that deficit-addled voters are on their side no matter what.... Let’s hope [the President] knows that he, not the speaker, is the player holding a full house, and that he will tell the country in no uncertain terms that much more than money is on the table."

CW: I'm not sure when or if the Times is going to get around to posting my comment on Rich's column, so here it is:

President Obama will not tell the American people what's at stake in the budget. None of us knows what his true ideology is. None of us knows how he would govern if we had a parliamentary system in which the leader of the government can pretty much govern as he wishes.

But we do know this: Prime Minister Obama would not govern as a progressive. All that progressive talk during the campaign was a vote-currying deception. Mr. Obama campaigned the way Republicans always campaign: by pretending his goals were markedly different from what they really were.

Obama perfectly followed the Republican playbook in 2008: he pretended to be a progressive who would right the wrongs of eight years of Republican rule. But when he got into the White House, he suddenly turned into a conservative who engineered a "stimulus" package that was largely Republican-style tax cuts, a healthcare law that was nearly identical to one Republicans proposed in the 20th century (& which also included the individual mandate, BTW), & a financial reform package that lets the banksters do what they want.

If you think I'm exaggerating, let's look at something that's more simple and straightforward than a complex budget or those huge bills that Obama signed into law during his first two years in office. Let's look at something over which Mr. Obama has complete control and for which he cannot claim the Congress forced him to "compromise": Here's what President Obama said in a campaign stump speech he made in the fall of 2007 in South Carolina:

 If American workers are being denied their right to organize & collectively bargain, when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a pair of comfortable shoes myself, I'll walk on that picket line with you....

Here's the video, which I first posted a couple of days ago:

Today, Republican governors in several states are attacking collective bargaining rights. Obama made one statement -- and then only in response to a reporter's question -- in which he said of the Wisconsin bill, "it appears to be an assault on unions." President Obama's comfortable shoes are nowhere to be seen. Reporters have repeatedly questioned Obama's press secretary Jay Carney about Obama's campaign promise, and Carney has dutifully obfuscated with responses like (this is not an exact quote) "People know where the President stands." Yeah, we know this: he's not standing in Wisconsin or Ohio or Indiana in those comfortable shoes.

Similarly, ever since budget season has come upon us, President Obama has been playing the part of a reliably Republican president. He has repeatedly told the American people that the government must live within its means. That's a line straight out of the Contract on America. Never mind that politicians since Alexander Hamilton -- you know, one of the fathers of the Constitution -- have said that federal deficits are a good thing. And where has President Obama been campaigning? At corporation after corporation where he has said we can "win the future" (or as Sarah Palin calls it, "WTF") by giving tax breaks to small businesses so they can innovate.

Not Word One about funding prenatal care or healthcare legislation or the EPA. Not Word One. Instead, Obama has given government workers an effective five-year pay cut by freezing their wages even as the prices of essential commodities (like grain & cotton) have soared, guaranteeing that prices of food and clothing will rise. He has also presented a budget that will cut home-heating assistance to poor families & Pell grants to college students. Hope you're not too cold while you're staying home from college.

Scott Walker made a "fireside" address the other day in which he expressed his respect for unions. ("I really do" respect unions, he emphasized.) Relying on President Obama to tell the American people the truth about what's in that noxious House budget is like relying on Scott Walker to tell the truth about how he feels about unions:

Not. Going. to. Happen.

The Commentariat -- February 26

** "War on Women," Cont'd." New York Times Editors: "Republicans in the House of Representatives are mounting an assault on women’s health and freedom that would deny millions of women access to affordable contraception and life-saving cancer screenings and cut nutritional support for millions of newborn babies in struggling families. And this is just the beginning."

On Scott Walker. This is the eighth governor that I've worked with in one way or another -- four Republicans, four Democrats -- and this is the first governor who takes a clear public position that he will never negotiate. The other seven were willing to take the 70 or 80 percent of what they wanted.... That's what you need to do to make government work.... Any person not willing to settle for half a loaf has never been hungry. -- Tim Cullen, the only Democratic Wisconsin State Senator to whom Walker will speak

Dana Milbank says Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's conversation with Ian Murphy, a/k/a Fake Koch, shows that Walker is a hooligan. ...

... Scapegoating Fail. Greg Sargent: "Many commentators expected that conservatives would have an easy time turning Americans against public employees by foisting the blame for our economic woes upon them. Wisconsin is showing that this is turning out not to be so easy, after all."

Karen Garcia: "At the same time that President Obama announced a two-year wage freeze for federal employees, he is asking for an additional $128 billion to hire 73,000 more security force cops in Afghanistan."

Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times: the murder of four Americans by Somali pirates will likely change U.S. strategy towards piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

Gail Collins continues her Presidential Primary Book Club. This time, she reads (some of) Mike Huckabee's many books. He's changed.

In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it. -- Robert Gates

Tom Shanker of the New York Times: "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a change of regime in that fashion again are slim." Here's the report from the Defense Department.

This is an extraordinary admission coming from a Secretary of Defense. I can't recall anything similar ever having been said, at least not while a war was ongoing. It is a scathing rebuke of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom Gates replaced. Rumsfeld is now on a book tour touting his laughable Remembrances of All I Did Right. Gates is saying, quite bluntly, "No, Rummy, you fucked up." -- Constant Weader

Right Wing World

The Real Reason Rep. Chris Lee Resigned from Congress. Remy Stern of Gawker learns that Lee apparently also solicited, via CraigsList, & had online chats with two transgender women.

News Ledes

Reuters: "A crowd estimated at more than 70,000 people on Saturday waved American flags, sang the national anthem and called for the defeat of a Wisconsin plan to curb public sector unions that has galvanized opposition from the American labor movement. In one of the biggest rallies at the state Capitol since the Vietnam War, union members and their supporters braved frigid temperatures and a light snowfall...." ...

... The Understory: "Police have just announced to the crowds inside the occupied State Capitol of Wisconsin: ‘We have been ordered by the legislature to kick you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what’s right from wrong. We will not be kicking anyone out, in fact, we will be sleeping here with you!’” ...

... Washington Post: "The jobs of thousands of [Wisconsin] state and local workers slipped into deeper jeopardy Friday, as Gov. Scott Walker threatened to trigger as many as 12,000 layoffs beginning next week unless lawmakers enact his plan to strip public employees of most of their collective bargaining rights." ...

... Wisconsin State Journal: "The enormous 'protest village' that has taken hold inside the state Capitol the past two weeks will officially end this weekend. Capitol police announced Friday that they would kick out protesters and close the Capitol doors at 4 p.m. on Sunday, a move that would allow crews to begin cleaning up after possibly the longest and most intense protests in state history." ...

... AP: "The legislative gridlock [in Wisconsin] prompted the Wisconsin Association of Schools Boards to warn districts that they have until Monday to warn teachers of possible nonrenewal of contracts. That's because if Walker's bill becomes law, it would void current teacher collective bargaining agreements that lay out protocol and deadlines for conducting layoffs."

New York Times: as expected, "Ireland ousted its discredited government on Saturday, electing new leaders who pledged to restore faith in the country after the trauma of a calamitous economic collapse. With most of the votes counted after the general election on Friday, a coalition government of the center-right Fine Gael and the Labour Party was on track to win a comfortable majority in Parliament. The next prime minister is likely to be Enda Kenny, a career Fine Gael politician...." Here's the Irish Times report, with links to related stories & audio.

USA Today: "President Obama told German Chancellor Angela Merkel today that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi should surrender power immediately because of the attacks he has made on his own people.... Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton echoed Obama's demand in a statement saying that Gadhafi's government would he held 'accountable for its violation of human rights.'" ...

... New York Times: "The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday night to impose sanctions on Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and his inner circle of advisers, and called for an international war crimes investigation into 'widespread and systemic attacks' against Libyan citizens who have protested against his government over the last two weeks." ...

... Washington Post: "Army leaders in eastern Libya who have turned against Col. Moammar Gaddafi's regime are preparing to dispatch a rebel force to Tripoli to support the beleaguered uprising there, a top military official said Saturday in Benghazi." ...

... New York Times: "A powerful tribal leader has called for the downfall of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, posing what may be the most significant challenge yet to the president, an American ally, who has been struggling to quell a popular revolt for more than two weeks. The move by the tribal leader, Sheik Hussein al-Ahmar, raised fears that the antigovernment protests, which began largely as a youth movement, could take a more violent and unpredictable turn." ...

... New York Times: "A bold effort by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to prove that he was firmly in control of Libya appeared to backfire Saturday as foreign journalists he invited to the capital discovered blocks of the city in open revolt. Witnesses described snipers and antiaircraft guns firing at unarmed civilians, and security forces were removing the dead and wounded from streets and hospitals, apparently in an effort to hide the mounting toll."

... AP: "The embattled regime of Moammar Gadhafi is arming civilian supporters to set up checkpoints and roving patrols around the Libyan capital to control movement and quash dissent, residents said Saturday." ...

... New York Times: "One day after the United States closed its embassy in Tripoli and imposed unilateral sanctions against Libya, the United Nations Security Council prepared to meet in New York on Saturday to consider imposing international sanctions, including an arms embargo and an asset freeze and travel ban against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, his relatives and key members of his government."

New York Times: "The results of the [Irish] election will not be announced until late Saturday. But an early exit poll predicted a crushing defeat for Fianna Fail, one of modern history’s most successful political parties, which has been in power for almost 60 of the last 80 years, most recently from 1997 until the present."

ABC News: "In a job typically filled by a woman, the White House has chosen the first-ever man to be the next White House Social Secretary. Jeremy Bernard, who is openly gay, will be named Special Assistant to the President and Social Secretary."

Baghdad on Lake Mendota

Paul Krugman compares the situation in Madison, Wisconsin to "Baghdad — specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence." Krugman says:

What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

The Times moderators are playing scrambled comments again today, so here's mine:

According to Tim Fernholz of the National Journal, Walker is really just faking the "budget crisis." Fernholz explains

... while Walker argues that his budget-repair legislation must be passed soon to avoid job cuts, the most controversial parts of his bill would have no immediate effect. The state's entire budget shortfall for this year -- the reason that Walker has said he must push through immediate cuts -- would be covered by the governor's relatively uncontroversial proposal to restructure the state's debt. By contrast..., his call to curtail the collective-bargaining rights of the state's public-employees, wouldn't save any money this year. [Emphasis added.]

As we learned earlier, Walker pushed through about $120 million in tax cuts, then cried "budget crisis." Now it turns out he has taken care of the budget shortfall by restructuring the debt. All those added "goodies": ending collective bargaining, giving himself the ability to give away power companies to his backers, cutting back health coverage for the poor -- those are what Walker described as "the bomb" he dropped on Wisconsin. That description, by the way, came in a prank call in which Walker thought he was taking a call from his financial backer David Koch.

To try to diffuse the "the bomb," Walker is now claiming,

I campaigned on (the proposals in the budget repair bill for Wisconsin) all throughout the election. Anybody who says they are shocked on this has been asleep for the past two years.

No. He didn't. PolitiFact rated Walker's assertion --

Walker, who offered many specific proposals during the campaign, did not go public with even the bare-bones of his multi-faceted plans to sharply curb collective bargaining rights. He could not point to any statements where he did. We could find none either.

During the prank call, Walker also revealed that he planned to trick state senate Democrats into returning to Madison, then declare the legislature in session & have the senate pass his draconian bill. Moreover, he told "David Koch" that, to ensure he got his way, he was going to keep sending pink slips (as Jon Stewart put it, "the streets will be pink with slips") to state workers. To him, those teachers and other state workers are just pawns in his little game of Destroy the Middle Class. His game strategy? Deception.

Funny thing, too. Walker has refused to talk with Democrats. He has refused to compromise with unions. But he can hardly wait to talk to David Koch. Really a man of the people, isn't he?

Weirdly, a Utah group is attempting to set up a recall of Wisconsin's Democratic state senators. Contra that effort, I'd suggest Badgers check out the state constitution to see what-all it says about impeachment and/or recall of a governor. If Cheeseheads don't want the Koch brothers as their de facto governor, they should get someone in the governor's mansion who isn't the Koch boy's puppet.